Fresco-Painting in ‘Sivatatvaratnakara’

Fresco-Painting in ‘Sivatatva Ratnakara’

BY C. SIVARAMA MURTHY, B.A., (HONS)

It has ever been the desire of man to express his feelings and emotions to people about him in glorious verse or eloquent speech. An attempt at a subtler mode of conveying the same ideas resulted in the birth of the art of dance and gesture. An appprently mute but really eloquent way of expressing the same emotional moods is to be found in the art of portraiture or painting, and sculpture. There has never been a time, since the origin of man, when art was totally unknown to him. In India, painting and music have been given the seats of honour in the assembly of Arts and Sciences. The subject of this essay is ‘Painting’ and since it is too wide to be covered in such a short compass, it is here proposed to deal with the theory of fresco-painting as laid down by Basappa Naik in his ‘Sivatatvaratnakara,’ a book brought to my notice by my friend Mr. V. Raghavan, some eighteen months ago.

India can boast of great princes quite profound in various branches of learning, and one such was a Kannada prince of the Keldi dynasty named Basappa Naik, a follower of the ‘Vira saiva’ faith. He lived about the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries and wrote a great encyclopedia in Sanskrit called ‘Sivatatvaratnakara.' Though not an elaborate treatise on the theory of Painting, the small chapter devoted to the subject serves as a very clear introduction to bigger volumes in Sanskrit. It is no doubt a later-day work but that does not diminish its importance. After dealing with the principles of architecture, the author introduces to us the art of fresco-painting as a method of adorning the beautiful walls of well-built mansions.

The chapter opens with a graphic and attractive description of a typical dancing hall (a theatre) illuminated with brilliant lights and supported by pillars of gold, sandalwood, gems and coral with its glassy floor vying with the crystal walls that mirror the objects brought within their range. It is the painting of such walls that enhances their innate beauty and produces joy in the spectator, and it is here that the art of painting is discussed as a necessary element in beautifying the theatre.

Competence to carry on this noble work is the next subject of consideration and the artist's qualifications are stated. Such wise and eminent men as are masters of form and line, experienced in colour-blending and capable of depicting the truth of emotions should be engaged.

To begin with, the wall must be neatly white being completely plastered with chunam. Care must be taken to avoid scratches and the surface must be perfectly smooth. Then must be prepared the vajralepa. This is prepared by boiling a new buffalo-skin in water till it becomes a greasy paste, soft as butter. The paste is then made into small sticks to be dried in the sun, and the sticks boiled in an earthen cup of water to produce a paste. This is mixed with all colours to be applied to the pictures drawn on the wall.

Three coatings of this paste mixed with white clay should be applied one coating over the other soon as it is dry. Conch-shell powder and sugar mixed with vajralepa paste should, with the addition of soft mud, be smeared over the wall to make it glossy. Zinc ore should be crushed into a moon-white powder on a stone and applied to the wall mixed with soft white mud and vajralepa. Over this wall should be painted pictures suggesting various emotions in the most picturesque manner. Their outlines should be perfect and admit colouring.

The materials are then described. Taking the brushes, the one called tulika is to be made of a strong and hollow-less bamboo of the thickness of the little finger, and with two nodes. At the tip of the tulika should be placed a small copper pin with a grain's length of it protruding, and a feather should be attached to it.

Mixing up the sweet-smelling root khachora, i.e., Sanskrit kaccuraka or gandhahyah, with some grains of boiled rice, and making it into a small stump with a point, we prepare a vartika with which to draw.

Procuring the soft hair of a calf's ear and fixing it up with lac at the end of a tulika we get a brush called lekhini. It is of three sizes–big, medium and small, and is useful for painting. The big one is used for big coatings and is held slantingly when colour is applied. The medium brush is used for marking with the side of its tip resting on the picture surface, and the small one is for outlining the picture, thin and, delicate lines being easily drawn with its tapering end.

The clever painter must conceive of the proportions of the figures, whether of living beings or of inanimate things, so as to suit the wall on which they are painted. He should picture to him self the entire figure, and so paint as to prove himself a master of anatomy. In the initial stages, the picture should be a rough figure-outline, devoid of colour, drawn with the vartika. It should next be coloured with the aid of brushes using appropriate mountain-born colours in particular places, as would suit particular tints. In depicting heights there should be light shown and the colour should be bright; for depths, dark shades must be shown. It is not necessary that there should be different colours used for depicting light and shade; graduation in the same colour would give the effect. Bright colours should be made brighter to lose their dark dullness; different colours should be used to represent figures having diverse colours.

The colour scheme is given next. In places where white should be applied conch-powder is to be used; the colour used for reddish brown is vermilion. Red lac or sap, red sanders and mountain-born red chalks are used for crimson tint. Yellow orpiment is to be used for yellow colour. Lamp-black is good for representing black. These four are considered pure (primary) colours. The mixed colours are produced by mixing the primary colours. They are mentioned next. Conch-powder mixed with vermilion gives a pale reddish tint like that of a red lily but in union with red lac or sap produces the colour of the Sun's horses. Lamp-black mixed with conch-powder gives the colour of smoke; added to blue the latter gives the grey colour of a pigeon. This colour is quite like that of the ‘Rajavarta’ stone and the hemp flower. Pure indigo which is of the colour of the blue lily, gives a green tint when mixed with yellow pigment. Red mineral mixed with yellow pigment becomes pale, but in union with lamp-black gives a dark tint. Lamp-black added to red lac gives brown, while the latter mixed with indigo gives the colour of the rose apple. These form the list of mixed colours and the painters use the primary or secondary or tertiary colours as occasions arise for their use. In the case of animals of variegated hue as black antelopes, spotted deer, tigers, peacocks, flancolins, etc., different colours should be used. After a coating of yellow, mineral chalk (red or white) and indigo should be used for white and blue respectively, yellow orpiment being quite essential for both.

Outlines beyond the required margin are to be carefully scratched away by the tip of a sharp knife. White dots are to be got only with its aid. Additional colour should be removed carefully by rubbing so as not to spoil the white plaster. Different delicate lines, thin and subtle like hair, might be drawn with the sharp ends of a grass called virana. Pure gold finely powdered on a stone is to be put in a glass vessel containing some water, and after straining the fluid and stirring it, the water should be removed completely till not a drop is left. The heavy and smooth gold dust would not go with the water but remain in the vessel, giving a rich orange hue. Some of this levigated powder of gold is to be mixed with vajralepa and after filling the brush with the paste the ornaments are to be drawn in gold. When the gold in the picture dries up, it is to be rubbed slowly with a boar’s tusk till it gets a burnished hue like lightning. This is the ordinary process in doing all pictures generally. The lines at the ends i.e., outlines, are to be drawn with lamp-black. Painting dress, ornaments, flowers and the colour of the mouth with red lac finishes a picture.

The next topic is ‘pose’ and its variety. First they are mentioned by name and later explained. Further on we get an account of the proportions of various gods, all of which should find a place in iconography–not that proportion has no place in figure-drawing and painting, by which process gods are as much represented as by sculpture –but only because it does not concern painting proper so much as sculpture.

So then, in these few pages one can see how very nicely the author Basappa has expressed his knowledge of wall-painting of his day. It does not mean he did not consult books on the subject written long before him, but all the same we ought to feel highly indebted to him for the way in which he kept green the memory of the processes of painting by writing it afresh.

A close study of the work of Basappa and Somesvara’s Abhilashitartha Chintamani would indicate that the former is an almost verbatim copy of the latter. Somesvara III, a king of the Western Chalukyan line of the 12th century A.D. was a versatile scholar and wrote an encyclopedia of knowledge in Sanskrit in which the chapter on painting, which is much bigger than the one in Sivatatvaratnakara, supplies information on the subject to Basappa. Most of the readings that are rather queer and misleading in the. Sivatatvaratnakara are easily corrected by following the better preserved text of the Abhilashitartha Chintamani. Even in cases where the correct text of Sivatatvaratnakara differs from that of Abhilashitartha Chintamani, it is the latter that generally gives a better meaning. So then Basappa Naik cannot boast of having written an original treatise; but all the same he deserves our respect as one who kept alive certain arts and sciences by rewriting them in a new work.

It would be interesting to see how the fresco process of the Roman Vitruvius coincides with ours in certain respects. "In Vitruvius the process of plastering ‘albaria opera’ are first described (VII, 2, 3) and it is provided that after the rough cast, ‘trullisatio,’ there are to follow three coats of plaster made of lime and sand each one laid on when the one below is beginning to dry, and the three of plaster in which the place of sand is taken by marble dust at first coarse, then finer, and in the uppermost coat of all in finest powder. It might now be finished with a plain face, but one brought up to such an exquisite surface that it would shine like a mirror. . . ." (Encyclopmdia Britannica, Vol. 20, 11^th Edition.)

It is evident that our ancients were quite clear about the nature of primary, secondary and tertiary colours. Only they never expressed secondary and tertiary colours as different, but named them both as products of mixing primary cotours. White though not accepted by moderns as a distinct colour, in spite of all paintings requiring Chinese or Flake white, is honourably accepted by our ancients as a primary colour so as not to mitigate its importance in the colour scheme.

Again the brushes used are by no means few. There are appropriate brushes named for various uses. The wash brush and the pointed No. 0 brush was as essential in India of long ago as today. The medium brush is especially useful; only there is one mentioned while we have a lot to do for inferior pictures. The curious pencil with a copper point is worthy of note as also the paste stump.

It is also to be noted that the old Indian painting process never advocates hazardous modes of beginning with colour at once on wet walls without drawing outlines, as some Indian art experts of today misrepresent. As a matter of fact no wet wall is mentioned. It is clearly stated on the other hand that outlines are to be drawn first. Painting on wet walls is the process in the West.

Zinc oxide is the chief ingredient of the white colour of that name and it is no wonder that it (zinc) is stated as quite essential for a final coating on the wall before drawing any figure. The various pigments are simple and easily got, being generally ochres, minerals and vegetable dyes. Burnishing of gold is quite essential. Cennino talks of this process and says: "The gold is then burnished till it appears almost dark (in the shadow) from its own effulgence." (Encyclopedia Britannica.)

In the Western process there is as free a use of yolk of egg as there is that of vajralepa in the Indian. Shreds of parchment are boiled down to be used as a medium. This corresponds to our vajralepa medium produced by boiling down buffalo's skin. Fish glue is yet another of the media of the West.

It is curious to note how the direction in the text to scratch off the superfluity of line in an outline by means of a sharp knife coincides exactly with the instruction of Ruskin in his ‘Elements of Drawing.’ "The ends of lines which go over the edge, are afterwards to be removed with the penknife." There can be noted many more comparisons in the Western and Eastern methods provided one has an eye for it. It must be clear from these pages how fine an idea of the technique of painting our ancestors had; suffice it to say that this short note will have gained its purpose if only it creates interest in the Indian artists of today and kindles their emulative fire, thus helping them to keep the torch of learning, albeit only in the sphere of the Fine Arts, alive and aflame.